Every Day Is Special

September 7, 2012 - Lusaka Agreement Day in Mozambique

African elephants are sometimes killed for their ivory. Still! Even though they are an endangered species and protected by law. Even though they are smart and loved by so many people—and even though they remember their loved ones after they die, and mourn for them.

Many other endangered animals and plants in Africa are also protected by law, but are dwindling in number. In 1992, wildlife law enforcement agents from several African nations met in Lusaka, Zambia, and made a multi-national agreement of how to better protect these organisms against poaching and destruction. Basically, the laws already in place must be better enforced.

Even though Mozambique was not a part of the Lusaka meeting or agreement, the nation honors this important agreement every September 7.

More on elephants...

To see an example of a grieving elephant, watch this short video.
Activity Village has a bunch of activities, including coloring pages, crafts, a jigsaw puzzle, and videos, about elephants.

More on Mozambique...

Check out this earlier post.

Also on this date:

Geologist Ferdinand Hayden's birthday

Brazil's Independence Day

September 6, 2012 - Unification Day in Bulgaria

The people of Bulgaria were bummed with the Treaty of Berlin (1878), because it assigned land Bulgarians considered part of their nation to other countries. Some Bulgarians began to explore peaceful ways of getting their land back.

One swath of land was called Northern Thrace, but the Treaty of Berlin gave it a new, artificial name: Eastern Rumelia. Most people living there wanted to be part of Bulgaria. And that is a huge reason why Bulgaria was able to take back Eastern Rumelia in a bloodless revolution on this date in 1885. Bulgaria and the former Eastern Rumelia declared their unification!

Gosh, I love a bloodless revolution! Peace instead of war, diplomacy instead of death.

But...most European nations didn't recognize the unified Bulgaria. In November of the same year, diplomacy failed and war broke out. A neighboring country, Serbia, attacked Bulgaria on some pretext, and a 14-day war was fought by soldiers of the two nations. Bulgaria won, and as the result of this short war, all the other nations of Europe accepted Bulgaria's unification.

Learn about Bulgaria...

In the 2011 World Championships for Rhythmic Gymnastics, the Bulgarian team won a gold medal. I hoped they would do well during this year's Olympics, but they didn't medal at all in this artistic sport.

Glimpse a small sample of the beauties of Bulgaria.

To learn more about Bulgaria, check out this earlier post.

Also on this date:

Independence Day in Swaziland

Bonaire Flag Day

September 5, 2012 - A Loooooong Tunnel Opened

– 1980

At the time, it was the world's longest road tunnel.

It stretches 16.3 kilometers (a little more than 10 miles), and it took 11 years to build.

On this date in 1980, the Gotthard Road Tunnel opened, connecting Switzerland to Italy. Don't get me wrong: people had been able to travel from Switzerland to Italy before 1980, but on a road that goes through a pass high in the Alps—and this road was often closed because of snowy conditions. The Gotthard Road Tunnel cuts through the mountain and can be used all year long.

Here Swiss workers celebrate the completion of the world's largest tunnel!

Since this Swiss tunnel was opened, two longer tunnels have been built: a tunnel that is more than 11 miles long in China, and one that is more than 15 miles long in Norway! It's so hard to hold onto a world record for long.

I wouldn't love to drive ten to fifteen miles through a tunnel, but it might be better than driving some of these crazy roads.

This tunnel in Zion has some cut-out
windows that give travelers
framed views of the scenery!

Speaking of crazy, here are five crazy tunnels from around the world. And how about five more? My favorite tunnel may be in Zion National Park (shown here, right).

Also on this date:

Anniversary of a tax on beards

September 4, 2012 - Newspaper Carrier Day

Today we celebrate the hiring of the first U.S. paperboy, on this date in 1833.

His name was Barney Flaherty, and he was hired by the publisher of the New York Sun. He was just ten years old.

The “paperboy” was a fixture of suburban lifestyles and boyhood for years. The paperboy would ride around town on his bike with a heavy bag crossed over his body, tossing newspapers onto driveways, being chased by dogs, and waving a cheery hello to the townspeople. It was one of the few jobs that a kid (usually a boy) could hold, and so it was very important to young people.

Those days are pretty much gone. At least in Southern California, we rarely see a teenager on a bike with a bagful of newspapers. Instead, newspaper carriers tend to be adults driving cars at the crack of dawn. Also, far fewer people subscribe to newspapers than in the past; for most news and entertainment, the internet is faster and much more informative.

Another kind of newsboy went extinct earlier: the kid hawking newspapers on city street corners with the cry, “Extra, extra! Read all about it!”

Jobs for kids?

Are there any jobs left for kids? Sure, some people will still pay pre-teens and teenagers to babysit, mow lawns or do other yard work, walk dogs or petsit, wash cars or clean windows. I still see kids selling lemonade. And some kids are creative enough to earn money a hundred other ways. One kid I know decorates T-shirts with air-brush or puffy paint, and another decorates T-shirts with stenciled designs. A kid I know not only walks dogs and pet sits, but she also does obedience training for dogs and their owners. One of the most exciting small businesses I've heard of recently is Caine's Arcade: a 9-year-old boy built an elaborate cardboard arcade, with some very surprising results.

Here are some tips for starting a business.

Also on this date:

Civil Servants' Day in Venezuela

Birthday of Los Angeles

September 3, 2012 = Dalton Introduces Atomic Symbols

– 1803

Most things in nature are a big mash-up of all sorts of materials, and it took chemists and physicists years to figure out what it is, exactly, that makes up our world (and the universe).

English chemist and physicist John Dalton was a big part of figuring it all out. On this date in 1803 he wrote some notes on “ultimate particles” (also known as “atoms,” which aren't all that ultimate, after all, since we now know that atoms are made up of smaller particles). Dalton proposed the idea that there are fundamental kinds of stuff, called elements, and that each element is made up of atoms of different masses. Atoms of gold, for example, would be much heavier than atoms of hydrogen. As Dalton wrote about a variety of elements, he used symbols to represent each element.

And that's the first time that anyone used a symbol to represent an element!

We don't use Dalton's symbols anymore, but many of his symbols were initial letters surrounded by circles, such as S for silver, C for copper, and Z for zinc. We do use this general idea: nowadays, one or two letters (without the circle) is the symbol for each element.

Our modern symbology was created by Swiss scientist Jons Kakob Berzelius, and naturally he did not use English as the basis for his symbols, as Dalton did. Instead, he used the shared language of science of his time, Latin, as the basis for his symbols. Because of this Latin origin, some of our modern elemental symbols don't match up with the English names:

Iron = Fe (ferrum)

Silver = Ag (argentum)

Gold = Au (aurum)

Lead = Pb (plumbum)

Potassium = K (kalium)

Copper = Cu (cuprum)

Antimony = Sb (stibium)

Mercury = Hg (hydrargyrum)

Tungsten = W (wolfram)

Tin = Sn (stannum)

Sodium = Na (natrium)

By the way...

Today the shared language of science is English.

Also on this date:

Labor Day

Anniversary of the founding of San Marino

Anniversary of Sweden switching sides

September 2, 2012 - National Day in Vietnam

On this date in 1945, Vietnam declared independence from both Japan and France.

How do you end up needing to declare independence from two very different nations? Well, France had colonized Vietnam in the 1800s and maintained control of the Indochina area until World War II. During that war, Japan invaded Vietnam. Vietnam went through a lot of especially tough times, and a leader named Ho Chi Minh helped wrest control of the city of Hanoi from the Japanese. More fighting during WWII and afterwords resulted in a divided Vietnam, with Hanoi and the rest of North Vietnam being Communist under Ho Chi Minh, and the south being ruled by some not-very-democratic leaders. And this division, of course, led to the long, grisly Vietnam War.

The war finally ended in 1975 and was unified under a Communist government. The nation has undergone a series of reforms and a period of great economic growth, although it still faces some pretty huge problems.

Vietnam's story is incredibly sad, and yet there are wonderful things to know about the land and the people. The Belgian singer Pham Quynh Ahn sings about her Vietnamese ancestry, saying that she knows her parents' homeland only through movies—only “the sights of war.” But, she sings, “One day I'll touch your soil / One day I'll finally know my soul.” Check out this lovely singer and her wonderful song—and enjoy some beautiful sights of Vietnam.

To learn more about Vietnam, check out this and this other earlier post.

Also on this date:

Anniversary of the installation of the first ATM

Anniversary of the cancelation of Star Trek

Anniversary of the last day of the Julian calendar

September 1. 2012 - Self-University Week Begins

Sometimes we take a class in order to learn something, but learning is something that happens inside of our own heads—and we learn things on our own all the time. Autodidacts are people who not only know they learn things on their own, but they embrace that. They would rather learn on their own than take classes.

And some autodidacts have declared this week as Self-University Week.

The official website of this week has a large list of ideas of how you can become a self-taught person (in other words, an autodidact). Here are a few of the ideas: